Chapter Two #2
“We most certainly have not.” The cleric’s eyebrow arched for a moment before her placid expression settled again.
Jem couldn’t take it personally that Cador had been in his cups the night before, as inconvenient as it was. “Surely he’s well enough to stand at the altar and repeat these ridiculous vows?”
A raucous shout echoed up the tunnel, followed by slurring laughter and too-loud, off-key singing. Jem went still with sudden understanding and fresh humiliation that chilled and burned all at once.
Cador wasn’t bleary and headachy or vomiting—what they called being “dragged by the horse” the day after drinking too much. No, he was still in his cups.
Jem’s groom was drunk.
Falling-down drunk, as Cador appeared in the tunnel with a shout of laughter and promptly sprawled onto the dusty stone with a thud Jem felt in his thin boots. Cador still wore the fur-trimmed leather and rough material of the day before.
It still clung to his incredible muscles.
Cador’s sister appeared, and she gave him a swift, none-too-gentle kick to the side.
She had quite a few muscles as well. “Up, you swine,” she hissed, nodding to a few burly Northern men who followed and now hauled Cador to his feet.
His boots were thick, black leather, but despite the sturdiness, Cador slipped and spun.
The sister eyed Jem the way she might the unwelcome runt of a litter of dogs. “My brother should be marrying a fellow hunter, so he’s not especially pleased.”
Santo stiffened beside Jem. “My brother is none too pleased either.”
She sighed. “I’m sure he isn’t. But here we all fucking are. It’s a sarf in the shit house, but there’s nothing to be done for it.”
Jem startled at her crudeness. Also, he’d never considered the notion of a sarf, the slithering, limbless reptiles that could bite and kill, hiding in a toilet. He shuddered.
“I’m Delen,” she said.
Santo made introductions, and the whole while Cador muttered and cursed, tugging against the unwavering grip of his comrades holding him up. An older male cleric appeared holding the neatly folded wedding robe for Cador and wearing an expression of furious disapproval rather than typical calm.
“Fuck this,” Cador grumbled.
Jem certainly shared the frustration, but as Delen had noted, there was apparently nothing to be done for it.
One of the Northerners had a horned tankard, and Delen forced her brother to drink from it.
Whatever was inside must’ve tasted abhorrent considering how red Cador’s face became, but he choked it down.
Then he vomited onto the dusty stone.
And vomited.
And vomited some more.
Jem, Santo, and the clerics scuttled to the mouth of the tunnel. The Northerners seemed alarmingly unfazed, and were actually laughing.
My first kiss is going to taste like puke.
Jem wanted to throw himself into Santo’s arms and weep, but he kept his chin high.
When Cador was through, the Northerners stripped off his dark shirt, revealing a broad chest dusted with dark blond hair.
Curving tattoos were inked into his pale skin.
There were ridges of muscle over his stomach, and a V of hair that disappeared beneath his belt.
Jem tore his eyes upward from the bulge outlined by the tight leather trousers. This beast of a man was to be his husband. Jem stared at the hairy chest and corded arms, the stuff of thrilling fantasies, and shivered with anticipation despite himself.
“His groom might break him in two!”
The laughing jest from yesterday echoed now, dread obliterating the flare of desire.
Even if Jem only had to spend a single night with him, would Cador be cruel?
This was why he’d stuck to fantasies instead of seeking out partners.
The reality of coupling with such a man would surely be different than the escapades in his novels.
While Jem’s robe hung long over his wrists, Cador’s was comically short on his arms, even though it was much bigger. Cador grimaced down at himself in apparent disgust, then seemed to notice Jem for the first time. His gaze was clearer, the disgust remaining.
“You,” Cador growled.
Santo puffed their chest, standing closer to Jem. “This isn’t Jem’s fault.”
Cador muttered something, then asked—accused, really—“What kind of name is ‘Jem’?”
“Uh… I don’t know?” Jem cleared his throat. “My mother said my eyes were like jewels of honey. No one calls me ‘Jowan’ much at all.”
Cador grunted, and Delen said, “Let’s get this over with.”
A massive hand caught his elbow, and Cador tugged Jem out of the tunnel and under the marble arch into the packed temple. Jem dug in his heels instinctively and heard nervous titters from their audience.
Cador pressed his full lips into a thin line and yanked. As if he weighed nothing, Jem practically flew to the altar in the center of the courtyard, the too-long robe tangling around his boots. Good gods, this brute could overpower him using only a finger.
True fear snaked down Jem’s spine. When he’d imagined a husband, he’d thought of a good and gentle man, a companion with whom to while away long, peaceful days by the lake.
He’d never expected his secret passions of the flesh to come to fruition any more than he’d anticipated a muscled merman to whisk him away like Morvoren.
Now that he stood at the altar, his half-drawn sketches of an ideal husband clarified into stark lines.
He wanted a husband who’d make him laugh.
Who’d keep him warm on cool winter nights and share his love of reading and swimming and tending needy birds.
A man who surely wouldn’t fulfill his dark, dangerous fantasies, but who’d make love to him tenderly.
Instead, he was to give himself body and soul to this brute? Marriage was supposed to be an even exchange, yet standing at the altar with the barbarian towering over him, Jem felt like an untested boy. He’d insisted he was a man the day before to derision, and it surely was a joke.
Cador released Jem’s arm, and Jem tensed his thighs so his knees didn’t knock.
His skin itched with the weight of hundreds of eyes.
At home, most people tended to forget he was there.
Now he stood on the dais before the high cleric, a pawn in a political bargain, his barbarian intended looming at this side.
He’d never felt quite so small.